" ... bits of original paradise ... "

23, DECEMBER, 2018

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Yosemite Trails

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As is his way, Chase guides us into the experience
and renders the scene as if we were there.

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A few miles of easy traveling brought us to another meadow

with golden flowers. Here dwelt in past times, one Miguel, a

Mexican. Traces of his occupancy remain in a rail-fence that

wanders in an irresolute manner about the meadow, the old

cedar rails whitening like bones in the sun, or submerged

a fathom deep in herbage. 

Each of these meadows seems more and more delightful

than the last. Sequestered in deep forest and hushed by

its murmur, they are heavenly places of birds and flowers,

bits of original paradise. 

The little brooks that water them ring carillons of tinkling

melody as they wind through shady tunnels of carex and 

bending grasses.

At morning and evening and on moonlit nights the deer

come, no longer even at the trouble of leaping the fences,

to regale on mint and lettuce that has descended through

many generations from the old settler's vegetable-garden.

All day the robins and the meadow-larks repeat their

canticles from the last remaining fence-posts, and 

squirrels and chipmunks scamper along the sagging 

rails, appreciating the convenience of a literal railway. '

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** Definitions for the curious:  **

fathom: a unit of length equal to six feet (approximately 1.8 m)

carillons: a set of bells in a tower, played using a keyboard or by an automatic mechanism similar to a piano roll.

carex: Large genus of plants found in damp woodlands and bogs and ditches or at water margins sedges.

regale: lavishly supply with food or drink.

canticle:  a hymn or chant, typically with a biblical text.

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